Game Pass is already usable on Mac through streaming. At best MS could port their games to Mac but it still means that most titles won't work on Mac natively anyways. I don't think EA is going to port Battlefield 3 or Alice Madness Returns to Mac for the sake of Game Pass for example.
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In 3 years, 50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs
- Thread starter senttoschool
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I don't know how it is performance wise, but the major downside for me, is that the streaming is console streaming. I play fallout 76, and there's no cross play, so my progression, my virtual currency, skins, assests are all tied to my steam/Bethesda account on the PC. If I play the game on game pass streaming, I lose all of that.
I could probably live with many other games via streaming but those games where I've invested in time and effort, I really don't want to start over. For FO76, its not even feasible to consider.
And 0ms is better still but even 3.5 is enough to achieve a high fps so no need for worry.
As it happens on my M4 Pro is seems it’s even under 1ms.
Not strange at all. Minecraft for the Mac is Classic/Java. Bedrock is not available for Mac.
Some DLSS presets tested using Metal 4 And GPTK 3 beta versions running on an M1 Max.
CP2077 presets are tested in the middle of the video.
“Metal 4 Features Tested - GPTK 3 Beta - Metal FX Upscaler + Metal FX Frame Gen - Like Nvidia DLSS!!!
Testing in more detail all NVIDIA DLSS Presets with the new GPTK 3.0 Beta.”
CP2077 presets are tested in the middle of the video.
“Metal 4 Features Tested - GPTK 3 Beta - Metal FX Upscaler + Metal FX Frame Gen - Like Nvidia DLSS!!!
Testing in more detail all NVIDIA DLSS Presets with the new GPTK 3.0 Beta.”
Aww he didn't try the transformer model. It fixes the crappy power lines in CP2077.
Yeah, Andrew Tsai tests CP2077 using the transformer model. He gets 80fps with the DLSS Quality preset on an M3 Max:
That's the difference between Mojang being an independent company and being part of Microsoft. None of those variants were released (or even in development, IIRC) until after the acquisition had completed. Minecraft Dungeons was created as a lure to the XBox platform with PC compatibility being a nice bonus. Also, only the Java edition is available for Mac OS, the bedrock version is not.
I am torn, upscaling to not panel native resolution still seems like a waste. I guess part of the problem is Windows laptops either have 1080p screens or 4k screens with few options in-between.
Most computer monitors come in either 1080p, 1440p, or 4K resolutions. Even ultrawide monitors are usually the equivalent of two "standard" resolution monitors, just with the width doubled. There are a few 5K monitors out there but they're targeted at creative professionals rather than gaming.
Something that just came to my attention - Nvidia is preparing to release their own ARM-based consumer CPU called the N1X. This could make it even more cost-effective to bring games over to the Mac if developers are already using ARM code for Nvidia's upcoming parts.
But, they're not "writing" for the N1X. That CPU is going to be running windows (purportedly), so any windows games should be able to run on this new CPU. ITs true that some development work to make them native will be required, but its not any different when Qualcomm came out with CPU for windows, I don't think there was much talk about Mac's market share increasing because of that either.
I don't see this as a positive or a negative in terms of mac gaming.
btw, here's some info on the N1X, from Jayztwocents.
The main hurdle in porting games to Mac is the difference in system frameworks and behavior, not the CPU architecture.
That is true, but in those cases folks are still upscaling to panel native resolution. The only time people are using a lesser final resolution than panel native (from what I gather at least) is for all the path tracing (or super heavy RT) stuff.
ROI is the major factor for Mac gaming. We've seen in this thread, how apple is providing tools needed to port and produce games on MacOS for the past few years, yet we don't see the fruits of that labor.
I was referring to technical hurdles, not business rationale.
It's an ARM-based processor, so it will have the same limitations and quirks pertaining to the x86 to ARM conversion as the Qualcomm Snapdragon used in some Surface devices.
No question, but porting an X86 windows game to an ARM based windows game would be more of a function of a recompile with the appropriate libraries and framework.
I'm sure there's more to that, but overall I think its a lot different then producing a windows based game vs producing a Mac based game.
My point is having an ARM based CPU doesn't inherently improve the likelihood that we'll see macOS games.
Some of the same quirks. With regards to gaming/3D applications at least, some of the problems on ARM64 Windows seem to be more related to Qualcomm's drivers/GPU than x86 to ARM conversion. Nvidia knows how to write decent Windows GPU drivers, optimize for games and can probably share most of the code with their other GPUs.
Shower thought: What if the success of Crossover has impeded the development of native Mac games?
Hear me out, back in the day when windows 3/3.1 was new and shiny, IBM created a competing operating system - OS/2. In order to attract users they made it so you could run windows programs. On paper sounded like a good idea, except that developers had no incentive to produce OS/2 native programs. Now, there were a lot of things that IBM did wrong with OS/2 but the lack of native apps was a huge issue, and later retrospectives put the blame on the fact that they included windows compatibility as the major reason.
I wonder if something similar is at play - why should developers spend the money, time and effort to create native mac games when it will run decently in crossover?
I'm not. saying its the sole cause, but I do wonder if that's a factor.
Hear me out, back in the day when windows 3/3.1 was new and shiny, IBM created a competing operating system - OS/2. In order to attract users they made it so you could run windows programs. On paper sounded like a good idea, except that developers had no incentive to produce OS/2 native programs. Now, there were a lot of things that IBM did wrong with OS/2 but the lack of native apps was a huge issue, and later retrospectives put the blame on the fact that they included windows compatibility as the major reason.
I wonder if something similar is at play - why should developers spend the money, time and effort to create native mac games when it will run decently in crossover?
I'm not. saying its the sole cause, but I do wonder if that's a factor.
Because Crossover unlike Proton is a paid product and despite getting better still relatively few buy it. There are about 2 million Mac users only on Steam but Codeweavers says they have helped ”hundreds of thousands” in their history, perhaps including the Linux users. Not all of them use Crossover to play games either and new updates can break games so it can never replace the experience of a native port.
Another problem is the performance penalty for heavy games. The native port of RE 4 runs 60-110% faster at max settings than in Crossover according to my own tests.
There is a big part of the OS/2 story and eventual demise you didn't mention, which was Microsoft's involvement with IBM on the OS before abandoning it due to two main factors: IBMs corporate structure meant the company was slow to make changes or correct the course when needed, and the popularity of Windows 3.0 led Microsoft to focus their resources on Windows, where they saw a greater potential for long term profit and success.